When the Stanley Cup Visited Vanity Fair

The author with the Stanley Cup. Photograph by Justin Bishop.
In the year 1100, the Holy Prepuce traveled from crusade-torn Palestine to Antwerp. The legendary relic’s visit to the Barbant miraculously spawned three bloodstains on a holy linen sheet. After a spit of great rejoicing and much hoopla, the new, big prepuce in town had its own processions, pilgrims, and even a chapel built in its sacred name. So the story goes.

Fabled foreskin is one thing.

Yesterday, when the Stanley Cup visited the offices of Vanity Fair, in Midtown Manhattan, the arrival bred miracles of its own. No, blood was not magically shed from thin air (though the N.H.L. tablecloth that travels with the three-feet-tall, 35-pound trophy was not entirely spot-free: perhaps some nachos or a bit of wayward cola). But a thoughtful pause—a sudden respite washed over the floor. Soon, pensive pilgrims from P.R., fashion, photo, copy, and art all strode to Stanley’s foot for peeks, pictures, and not a few pokes. People also gathered round this silver-and-nickel-alloy guerdon to meet its guardian: Mike Bolt.

These days, one would be hard-pressed to find a relic master like Bolt, whose official title, “Keeper of the Cup,” is one he’s worn with pride for a decade. Of Galahad’s fine ilk, Bolt goes pretty much everywhere the grail goes, plucking up adventures along the road, where he and Stanley together spend more than 250 days of every year. Bolt, a native of Toronto, is a bachelor. “This is my wife, my kids, whatever you wanna call it,” he said, gesturing to the gleaming trophy. “I wouldn’t do this [job] if I had a family.”

And guarding the Cup is serious business.

On Bolt’s first trip to Afghanistan with his charge, in 2007, they were welcomed by a missile attack on the first night. This, just after landing in Kandahar—an unorthodox, Bradbury-esque aviation procedure that, as Bolt describes it, “was a lot of ground-sky, ground-sky, shoot-down, shoot-in, so you’re a little wobbly.” Once they were on the ground, the top Canadian general at the time, Rick Hillier, instructed Bolt to take the Cup—which travels in a nondescript black flight case, roughly the size of a mini-fridge, with wheels and a few “fragile” stickers plopped about haphazardly—to another nearby military base.

Off they went—Bolt, Hillier, and Stanley—in a Chinook helicopter piloted by a few vigilant, trigger-happy U.S. Marines. (Special Forces provided ground support for good measure.) “When we got to the other base, the place just went electric,” remembers Bolt, who wears white gloves when the trophy is out of its box. “It’s amazing to see how many jerseys people brought over to a war zone.” Eighteen hours from his point of departure, the Keeper of the Cup was “really dying for a shower.” Alone in his barracks, wrapped in only a towel, he heard air-raid sirens begin to wail. It was, he realized after considering his locale, not a drill. “I did what my mother always said: ‘Sit tight’.” So Bolt did—on the cup case, while everyone else ran to a bunker before the earth-shaking blast. “Holy shit,” Bolt remembers one soldier saying to him just after the ordeal. “You’re dedicated to your job!”

Bombs aside, Bolt doesn’t seem too fazed by much outside of the N.H.L. superstar milieu. Last year, when Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios, no Vanilla Ice, co-hosted a party with the Cup on the beach in Malibu, Bolt was there, in the thick of things. “It’s a joke, but I always joke that Chris had more celebrities at his party than the Oscars,” he said of the seaside fête. “Guys like Ray Liotta, Cuba Gooding Jr., D. B. Sweeney Kid Rock was there The guy from Scrubs.” A ways into the party, as Bolt tells it, Sylvester Stallone and Tom Hanks crashed—call it Cup Fever. “Tom Hanks acted like what fans act like when they see him,” said the Keeper. “Rumor traveled down the beach that the Cup was on the beach somewhere, and [Hanks] literally walked a mile and a half I mean, he was ecstatic. He was generally giddy.”

An hour into the Cup’s visit to Vanity Fair, the crowd was beginning to thin. People had work to do, after all. And with the N.H.L. playoffs breaking into full swing, so did Bolt and Stanley. They had to catch a flight in an hour. The trophy returned to its flight case, tablecloth and vade mecums in tow. But all that’s old hat for these two. “I’ve been coast to coast five different times in the last month,” the Keeper said with a weary smile. “And a whole bunch of places in between.”